1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a cloud computing system, a document processing method, and a storage medium.
2. Description of the Related Art
A system that divides data to be processed into a plurality of blocks upon reception of a single processing request, performs processing simultaneously in parallel using a plurality of processing modules, combines the processing results, and then outputs these results as the result for the processing request has been proposed. For example, Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 11-194910 discloses a network printer apparatus that divides print data received from a terminal device, assigns the divided print data to the respective printer engines, and then sorts and outputs print data output by the respective printer engines.
On the other hand, a utilization configuration of a computer referred to as “cloud computing” (hereinafter referred to simply as “cloud”) has recently been proposed. In the cloud environment, a user utilizes computer processing as a service via network. By constructing a network service system on a cloud environment, a service provider is not responsible for the maintenance and management of hardware, and only needs to pay a fee for the necessary computer resources that have been employed to a cloud business enterprise. Therefore, cost saving and a flexible increase or decrease in resources may be realized.